Sunday, 20 May 2012

Cinema Screens and Podcast Chat...and More Snæfellsjökull News

"Memories of Old Awake", Patrick Chadwick's Cambridge Ideas series documentary about my research (online on Vimeo here), hit the big screen in Reykjavík a couple of weeks ago when it was screened as part of the Reykjavík Shorts and Docs Film Festival. It also showed at the Dada Saheb Phalke Film Festival in India. Gísli Súrsson goes global...

A 25-minute long chat about the sagas and my travels that I recorded back in January withBBC History Magazine's editor Dave Musgrove can be downloaded and listened to as a podcast here.

Much more excitingly, last Thursday (which was a bank holiday in Iceland on account of its being Ascension Day, "Uppstigningardagur" in Icelandic, literally meaning "Climbing Up Day"), saw me join a few others in the ascent of Snæfellsjökull, ice-axes at the ready and fully crampon-ed (the neat Icelandic word for crampon is "mannbroddur", "man-spike"). A description of the climb and thoughts arising from it will be posted here soon.

3 comments:

Dr Lethbridge, in watching the fantastic film about your work (can't wait for the book), I noticed a couple of times the focus being on *reading* & the *page* on which the sagas are recorded. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the differences between reading them and listening to them? This question comes from recent exposure to Sequentia's Eddic recordings and Jackson Crawford's less dramatic recording of the Voluspa. Is there a big difference perceived between the aural possibilities of the lays versus the sagas?

About Me and This Blog

I am a 33-year-old academic researcher currently based in Reykjavík, Iceland. In 2011, after many years studying the medieval Icelandic sagas at the University of Cambridge, I set off on a year-long solo research project/adventure which involved reading each saga 'on location' around Iceland.

The 1000-year-old past described in the medieval Icelandic sagas is written into the landscape all around Iceland. In 'The Saga-Steads of Iceland: A 21st-Century Pilgrimage' project, I explored how the sagas are a living literature with an existence beyond the printed page.

I used this blog to report on my progress and write about specific sagas and my experiences over the course of the year; I am currently completing a book about the project.